Fans of Harry Hill’s TV Burp will be aware of the song through
which the comic expresses his astonishment at a clip from the week’s telly.

After citing some of the outlandish things (a piano-playing cat, for instance) he has dwelt on before, Harry trills: “Buuuuuuuuut ... I certainly didn’t expect to see that!” by way of introducing an octogenarian shearing a suburban hedge entirely naked but for the ocelot cub on his head.

The ditty was summoned to mind the other day by something far more astounding than that. John McEnroe was unmistakably deferential to a Wimbledon co-commentator. I certainly never expected to hear that. Not after years of McEnroe treating sidekicks with the thinly-veiled condescension of a tennis deity talking down to such journeyman mortals as Andrew Castle and John Lloyd.

The recipient of this startling tribute was Barry Davies. Any doubt that Bazza is now a National Treasure died when McEnroe stated his outrage that he hasn’t commentated on football for eight years. Whether or not Johnny Mac is quite the English football expert he appears (he sounded equally scandalised by David Beckham's Olympic snub), there was no arguing with his admiration for Bazza.

Although his recent oeuvre has been confined to minor tennis matches and an eclectic range of Olympic events, to millions of us Davies remains the finest football commentator British TV has known. Everyone of a certain age remembers his edited highlights – “Interesting, very interesting ... Look at his face, just look at his face!” (of Frannie Lee), “You have to say that’s magnificent” (Maradona’s post-Hand of God second goal against England), and others. But there was so much more to him than a few unforgettable lines.

He read a game brilliantly, had mastery of rhythm and cadence, and knew the value of silence in a way that John Motson – so inexplicably preferred to him for so long – has never quite grasped.

Bazza had his faults. There were the penchants for bombast, of course, and for pronouncing foreign names in a bespoke manner that defied the spelling. And when finally he was promoted above Motty, he was cursed with the 1994 World Cup final and the 1995 FA Cup final – two of history’s most eye-gougingly tedious games. The usual reticence was jettisoned for fear of being mistaken for a coma, and it didn’t go well.

For all that, you have to say he was magnificent. He brought a rigour, erudition and analytic intelligence to his work that no one before or since has matched, and this was his undoing. Shortly before the 2006 World Cup, I asked the head of BBC football why Bazza wouldn’t be involved. “Too Oxbridge,” was the stark reply.

In fact, Bazza went to Kings College, London to study, of all things, dentistry. But he had the decency to flunk, and the world of rinse-and-spit’s loss proved football’s lustrous gain.

Whatever the inverted intellectual snobs of the BBC may feel, listening to Bazza was never, as it so often has been with Motty, like having your teeth pulled.

At a time when football commentators are delivered en masse from a factory production line in China – you need Professor Higgins to distinguish one from another by voice alone – we need his distinction.

If the BBC reckons him too old at 74 for a front-line job, the punters clearly disagree. They tweeted so much lavish praise on his Wimbledon work this week that one point Bazza was trending on Twitter.

These days we are all expected to work until 93, so here is an early chance for new BBC director-general George Entwistle to address the charge of ageism. Bazza claims that he has no desire for a football comeback, but one suspects his arm wouldn’t take a tremendous amount of twisting.

For now he must content himself with hockey at the Olympics, but it will be an absurd waste of a rare talent if he is allowed to slip back into obscurity after that.